WikiLeaks and the cyber war.

This is a discussion on WikiLeaks and the cyber war. within the Off Topic & Humor Discussion forums, part of the The Back Porch category; Originally Posted by AlexHassin
looks like its spilled over to master card now.
Yes, and so how in the world does one man recruit people ...

And if I wanted to, I could go into work right now and gain access to hundreds of thousands of classified documents, put them on a disk, and mail them do Wikidouche. Just me, on a local holiday, with no help from anyone. People with access have ACCESS; the only thing really keeping the whole ball of wax together is that most folks (myself included) would never in a million years consider being a traitor.

A man fires a rifle for many years, and he goes to war. And afterward he turns the rifle in at the armory, and he believes he's finished with the rifle. But no matter what else he might do with his hands - love a woman, build a house, change his son's diaper - his hands remember the rifle.

And if I wanted to, I could go into work right now and gain access to hundreds of thousands of classified documents, put them on a disk, and mail them do Wikidouche. Just me, on a local holiday, with no help from anyone. People with access have ACCESS; the only thing really keeping the whole ball of wax together is that most folks (myself included) would never in a million years consider being a traitor.

Not everything is a conspiracy.

Once you can get access to some of the resources, you have access to a whole lot of stuff. But a lot of us take our Oath very seriously, just as I take any classified material my lowly grunt hands see very seriously.

It surprises me that we are living in a supposedly open democratic society of the people by the people and for the people...yet we need wikileaks to tell us what our government is up to.

With all due respect, when it comes to things like defense and foreign relations, unless you really need to know because you are a part of it, you don't really need to know. This is just my personal viewpoint on it. But a lot of the classified stuff could be very damaging to our country, in a wide manner of ways. Once again, that in no way reflects any viewpoint of any organization, but it is my own. There are times I know I just need to do something, without knowing what is going on at levels above me, and I am okay with that, it is what it takes to keep our nation safe.

Once you can get access to some of the resources, you have access to a whole lot of stuff. But a lot of us take our Oath very seriously...

Indeed. When you consider that there are something like a million people with some level of security clearance, the fact that this is such an EXTREMELY rare occurrence is really a rather good comment on the integrity of the American people.

A man fires a rifle for many years, and he goes to war. And afterward he turns the rifle in at the armory, and he believes he's finished with the rifle. But no matter what else he might do with his hands - love a woman, build a house, change his son's diaper - his hands remember the rifle.

A man fires a rifle for many years, and he goes to war. And afterward he turns the rifle in at the armory, and he believes he's finished with the rifle. But no matter what else he might do with his hands - love a woman, build a house, change his son's diaper - his hands remember the rifle.

Anonymous is just a bunch of morons living in their parents basements who like to e-harass people and 4chan is a pedo hangout. It is obvious they jumped the bandwagon for their own perverted pleasure, however I do not believe for one minute that the crossdresser was the only source of info for wikifreaks. There are more and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Even considering the rape setup to shut him up Assante conveniently faces in Sweden.

Part of the problem in the past ( hopefully it is in the past) was that there were major government agencies that were suffering from chronic institutional inertia and rectal cranial inversion. A lot of stuff would be classified just because "office A" didn't want to share it with "office B". The feud between FBI and CIA goes back to the OSS days. FBI and ATF were just as bad. I would say that probably half of what I have seen that was "sensitive" or "secret" needed to be.
Hypothetically speaking lets say I was working for CIA and I worked in the periodicals section of the library. My task this morning is to compile open source material from the last six months relating to Mexican corn production and demand. Even though I am using nothing but newspapers, magazines, published Mexican government estimates ( all available to the public) etc. my folder full of clippings may very well be "secret". Depending on how requestor decides to classify that folder it may not be made available to State or Agriculture.
Also, some classification was just a knee jerk reaction by people only vaguely familiar with operational security to show that they were doing something.

It is not just the Feds doing this. One county facility I worked in was on a corner in the county seat with a big sign outside announcing to the world what we were doing there. We relocated to a "covert" facitiy in 2002. Of course no one would ever figure out who we were and what we were doing, with the flag poles and all of the marked vehicles from the various agencies in the parking lot and people coming and going 24/7/365. Or the bosses holding press briefings on the front steps of our building. But god help you if you received even official mail at that address! That must all go through headquarters! OPSEC!!!!!!!

One of the things that killed me was an OPSEC seminar I attended. Guy walks up to the front of the room and kicks things off by asking who in the room has access to classified information. About half the people raised their hands. And then he asked
"And why are you telling me this in front of all these people?"

One of our biggest problems was senior people that could/would not learn to work with new technology. Instead of them learning how to actually do what needed doing, they would just find someone that was literate enough with the hardware/software to handle it for them. This would frequently result in people having access to a lot of stuff that was way above their pay grade. Some people can print a file and pull it off the printer without reading any of it. Not everybody can/will do that. That is where problems frequently started.

Well, don't confuse OPSEC with actual classification - there are plenty of things that are OPSEC that aren't "actually" classified. Only the Federal government can classify something, and only certain people have "original classification authority." Anybody just can't decide that their pet project is "Secret," it must (theoretically) rise to level prescribed by law as to what "Secret" means.

And yes, other govts/groups/whatever can have proprietary, sensitive, or otherwise guarded/protected information (medical information comes to mind - it can be protected so that people who release it may face criminal charges, but it is not "classified" in the sense we are talking about here); only national security information is "classified."

A man fires a rifle for many years, and he goes to war. And afterward he turns the rifle in at the armory, and he believes he's finished with the rifle. But no matter what else he might do with his hands - love a woman, build a house, change his son's diaper - his hands remember the rifle.

Oh yes OPFOR, there is most definitely a difference and that does greatly irritate some folks that wish they could classify stuff but can't! I would be willing to bet a cup of coffee that you know two or three of that type yourself. I imagine at one time or another you may have worked for one. I know I did. And as far as the standards, it has been a while but yes I am passingly familiar with the rules. Like you say "theoretically" everything that is classified meets the standard. But unless things have improved significantly (and I hope they have) in the last twenty years I would bet you a donut to go with the cup of coffee that within the last month something came across your desk as classified that someone probably had to spin a bit to meet the standard.

No doubt, things are habitually "overclassified," or even have the declass date/conditions exaggerated. I don't know why this is so common, other than the fact that you really can't get in trouble for "over" classifying something, but if you "under" classify it and release it to folks that shouldn't see it, you can get in a bit of a spot... :)

A man fires a rifle for many years, and he goes to war. And afterward he turns the rifle in at the armory, and he believes he's finished with the rifle. But no matter what else he might do with his hands - love a woman, build a house, change his son's diaper - his hands remember the rifle.

I really wasn't as clear as I meant to be in my first post. The gist of it is that there seems to be an obsession with secrecy at all levels of government, and sometimes the people controlling it don't really know what they are doing or why. Some equate access to restricted information as status or power. Having worked for a couple of that type I believe I can say that those types of "power plays" frequently end up being counterproductive (CIA/FBI rivalry) and more of a threat to national security than making some of the "secrets" known.

And of course we have all had to deal with the people that make a point of making it known that they have secret information, that you should be glad you dont have clearance for because you couldn't sleep at night, and by the way how do I open this confidential file? My password is "password" and can you print that out and leave it on my desk for me? I have to leave early today but will need it first thing when I get back on monday...........
I'm sure everyone here has dealt with "That guy" at one time or another.

From what I've been reading, DOS attacks are considered cheesy in the hacking community and usually done by amateurs.

its easy for scripter’s to use. that’s what most of the anon grope are.. as for why they do it, it fits the only political goal they seam to have. that is the freedom of information on the internet. that’s why the did there protest against the church of sciencetology and there involvement in the Iran protests.